


(Never) Let Me Go

by veenae



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Not A Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 13:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veenae/pseuds/veenae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He's gone, Stiles," Scott says and Stiles can't breathe.</p><p>[In which Derek drowns that night in the pool and Stiles starts seeing his spirit.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Never) Let Me Go

**Author's Note:**

> based on: [this](http://obrienbutt.tumblr.com/post/33384582178/sterek-au-derek-drowns-during-the-night-of-kanima)
> 
> Also, I'm sorry. I just saw the prompt and this just kind of spiraled out of control.

The first time it happens is at the funeral.

It’s a small, somber affair. Stiles stands between his father and Scott, Allison on Scott’s other side, and the three newly-turned betas across from them while the—priest? Church official? He has no fucking clue—gives the traditional “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” speech that Stiles thinks is in poor taste considering how the rest of the Hales died, but mostly it acts as white noise to his ears.

He stares down at the casket, sleek and dark and probably made of mahogany or some other super expensive material. He has no idea how they managed to afford such a thing, or whether Isaac pulled some strings with his job, or he simply ended up stealing the stupid thing. It doesn’t matter, in any case.

So he’s just staring at it, his dad’s hand on his shoulder a comforting weight, when he sees something move in his peripheral vision. He jerks suddenly, twisting around to catch sight of the dark blur but there is nothing there. “Stiles?” his dad whispers as the wolves look at him, identical confused expressions on their faces.

Stiles shakes his head. “Sorry, thought I saw something.” The worried look doesn’t leave his father’s face but Stiles ignores it. Slowly the procession comes to a close and the casket is lowered into the ground. One by one, they throw a handful of dirt until Isaac picks up the shovels and distributes them to the rest, a request Stiles himself asked for, to bury Derek themselves. His dad thought it was touching gesture and Stiles doesn’t tell him that it’s only fair; after all, he was the one who killed him, he should be the one to bury him, too.

So they spread out quietly and throw dirt into the ground until all six feet of it is covered and they toss the shovels to the side and simply head out of the cemetery. Eventually he’s the only one left, but Stiles can’t make himself move away. If he moves, then it makes it real, his mind unhelpfully supplies, and he’s not ready for it to be real. Stiles is nothing if not a master of denial.

He doesn’t hear the footsteps until they’re right behind him and Stiles swivels around quickly, thinking it’s the dark blur thing from before, but it’s only Dr. Deaton. He nods at Stiles but doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Deaton simply stares at the grave with an unreadable expression on his face. The last time Stiles saw Deaton and Derek together was the night they tried to sneak into the school and seeing Deaton tied up in the back of Derek’s car. It’s odd, to say the least.

Deaton kneels down, putting one hand on top of the fresh mound of dirt, and says, “I’m sorry, Talia,” so softly that Stiles probably wasn’t meant to hear it. Stiles has no idea who Talia is, but before he has a chance to ask, he belatedly notices the rope in Deaton’s other hand. He thinks back to the night he and Scott dug up Laura Hale’s body, the wolf’s bane rope circling the grave.

“Is it a werewolf thing?” Stiles asks, nodding at the rope when Deaton looks at him.

“Yes,” Deaton answers, “it’s tradition. It forces them to turn into a wolf so that they may pass on onto the afterlife.” There is a short pause, before Deaton asks, “Would you like to help?”

Stiles holds out his hand in answer and follows Deaton’s instructions as he carefully explains how to infuse the wolf’s bane with the rope, then carefully burying it until the only thing left is the small stalk of the purple plant standing near the headstone.

\---

It happens like this:

Stiles is tired and frustrated and annoyed in the way that he could only be in the presence of his present company. His legs burn from treading water for the past two hours and his arms are throbbing from holding up two hundred pounds of muscle that keeps trying to slip through his hold. His entire body aches and he can’t, he just can’t do this anymore.

He turns his head and sees his phone lying by the side of the pool and Derek hisses, “Don’t even think about it!” even before the thought is able to completely form in his mind. But Stiles is exhausted, beyond that even, and then Derek is throwing his trust back into his face and that… that hurts a lot more than it really should. Sure they maybe haven’t gotten off on a good foot when they first met, but Stiles honestly thought that with everything that’s happened between them, they were simply past all that, and to be proved wrong… it feels a lot like betrayal and Stiles… 

Stiles sees red.

He gives into his instincts because he may not be the greatest fighter and he may not have amped up senses like everybody else, but he is smart and capable and so much more than any of them give him credit for, so just fuck Derek and his untrustworthiness. He is a goddamn asset, and maybe it’s time that everyone understands that, because honestly Stiles is just so fed up with all this petty bullshit. 

So he just gives in and lets go and swims as fast as he can to the edge, grabbing his phone because all he needs is Scott to get over here and then everything will be fine, it’ll be great and this will just cement the fact that everybody needs to listen to what he says from now on, because he just fucking knows better.

Except.

Except Scott ends up hanging up and Stiles is so thrown off that he can only stare at his phone in incredulity for a second. He wants to call back, because it’s not like he’s calling just for the heck of it, this is an emergency and Stiles really, really needs Scott to get over here, like two hours ago. But then he sees the bubbles bursting from the water where Derek is trapped and it’s really not a question anymore, so he throws the phone away and dives under, grabbing onto him and pushing back up to the surface.

And Derek isn’t breathing.

Derek isn’t breathing and the stupid scaly beast is still circling around the pool, hissing every time it tries to get closer to the water, and Stiles is feeling the last of his energy dwindling away and Scott just hung up and there is no help coming and this is it, this is the end.

He swims over to an edge and tries to grab onto the bar, just something to hold onto because Derek isn’t breathing and Stiles keeps shaking him and yelling his name even when the chlorinated water is making its way into his mouth, and he just needs something, anything, to hold on to, and his fingers are brushing up against the bar and he just needs a little more, just a little… but his hand slips and his eyes close and then they’re both sinking to the bottom…

…and then Scott is there and tossing them both out of the pool while he roars at the beast. Stiles coughs and sputters but doesn’t see anything but Derek’s body and _the way it isn’t moving and oh god why isn’t it moving_ —and his hands are fisted over Derek’s chest before his mind even has a chance to catch up with his body and he’s counting out breaths and in the distance there is the shattering of glass and soft _plop plop plop_ as it falls into the water and Stiles doesn’t see any of it until Scott puts his hands over his, saying quietly, “It’s been fifteen minutes already, Stiles.”

“No,” Stiles says, and his voice is hoarse and his head hurts from the rescue breathing or treading water or because he didn’t even notice that he was crying until Scott forcefully pulls him away, a steady hand on his shoulder, and his mind is nothing but a string of _no no nono nonononononono_.

“He’s gone, Stiles,” Scott says and Stiles can’t breathe, and everything is spinning, and Scott is grabbing one of his arms and putting it to his chest, telling him to “breathe, Stiles, just breathe…” until Stiles starts taking deep breaths and his heart is starting to match Scott’s and he all but collapses into the seat Scott veers him into while he calls the police.

He isn’t too sure what happens after. There are flashing lights outside, blue and red and irritating, and his dad is wrapping him up in his arms and someone else pulls him away to the back of an ambulance, draping a blanket over his shoulders and Scott is a steady presence by his side, dutifully answering questions the same time as he squeezes Stiles’ shoulder.

Everything is a big blur of color and sounds, things he won’t remember in the morning. 

What he doesn’t forget: the EMTs placing Derek into the black body bag, his face pale like that time he was shot with the wolf’s bane bullet, the zipper obscenely loud to his ears as he’s loaded into the back of another ambulance.

\---

His dad calls him brave later that night, rubbing his back in a soothing motion. He calls him a hero, and tells him how proud he was to have a son like him. Stiles says, “I’m no hero, dad,” and his dad says, forcefully, “Yes, you are,” in a tone that books no argument, and Stiles buries his head into his pillows until his dad takes the hint and walks out of the room.

 _I’m no hero,_ he thinks bitterly, _I let him go. I had him and I let him go. Heroes don’t do that._

\---

He spends the next two days researching drowning.

\---

He’s at lacrosse practice the next time it happens.

There’s a game coming up and even though he knows he’ll be sitting on the bench the entire time, Finstock still expects him to practice, if only to make everyone else look good. Stiles embraces it like a lifeline after Derek’s death. On the field, he doesn’t have time to think about anything but the game, the balls he fails to catch, the drills Coach makes them run. When he’s on the field, there’s nothing about pools or drowning in his mind, not if he wants to get off the field largely unscathed.

So it’s the middle of practice and it’s not much different from any other; Jackson is still a douchebag, Danny is still not allowing any balls to pass into the goal, Scott is still using his wolfy powers to show off to Allison.

But then he gets the ball passed to him and he’s too stunned for a moment to realize what exactly that means, but then Coach is yelling at him and he stops gaping and starts playing and that’s about the moment when everything goes to hell. He’s running and slipping through defense until he’s at the perfect spot to make a goal and just as he’s about to shoot it, he sees the same black blur from the cemetery right in the corner of his eye. He turns his head so quickly, he almost gets whiplash. 

Naturally there’s nothing there but woods, but there’s a heavy feeling, like someone is watching him. He shudders, remembering when Derek used to loom in the exact spot he’s looking at right now. He can feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up, but before he can examine it further, he gets tackled to the ground and then the only thing running through his mind is pain, pain, _pain_.

\---

 _I need sleep,_ he tells himself around the sixth time he sees the blur. He rubs his eyes, and watches the corner of his room for another thirty seconds before pushing away from his homework on the desk and climbs into bed.

He tosses and turns for hours but the feeling of being watched doesn’t go away.

\---

Lydia has a breakdown in the middle of the class a few days later.

One moment everything is fine, everyone is working on the math problems that they were assigned and the next Lydia is screaming, loud and shrill and horrifying just like at the ice arena, and she’s scrambling away from something only she sees, tears streaming down her face while the rest of the class watches on, stunned. The teacher rushes over, and Scott leaps out of his seat as well, and they both attempt to calm her down, and normally Stiles would be right there helping as well, but he all sees is the black blur by the edge of the door and he forgets how to breathe.

He may have been able to ignore it for the past few days, blaming it on his sleeplessness and tricks of the light, but now that blur has taken a distinct shape, and Stiles feels his throat clog up and his chest tightens and all of a sudden, he is back in the pool watching Derek sink down to the bottom, a stream of gurgling bubbles as Derek calls out his name.

Stiles jumps out of his seat and runs out of the classroom, his heart pounding hard and fast, but there’s nothing there of course. Absolutely nothing; no people or dark blurs or anything out of the ordinary.

Scott finds him sometime later in a dark corner of the locker room. He remembers several months ago when the roles were reversed and Stiles was telling Scott about panic attacks. It feels like a lifetime ago.

“Are you okay?” Scott asks, walking over slowly like he would to a wounded animal. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles answers, and it’s not a lie. Scott looks concerned, a look he is getting more and more often these days and Stiles turns away, pretending not to notice it. It’s not like he can explain that he keeps seeing Derek everywhere and how he can’t sleep because every time he closes his eyes he keeps seeing Derek dying over and over and over. He can’t explain how the guilt is slowly chipping away at him and how his dad keeps looking at him, confused and worried, when he thinks Stiles isn’t paying attention.

“I don’t know, Scott,” he repeats, rubbing his hands over his face furiously. “I just… I just want to go home.”

“Okay. Okay, come on, I’ll take you home…”

\---

Ms. Morrell is polite and friendly. She has an easy smile and nice eyes but there’s something about her that immediately raises Stiles’ hackles. (Any other day he’d laugh at the horrible pun, but then he remembers Derek and the reason he’s here in the first place and the urge quickly dies).

He fiddles with his crosse as they go over small talk; his classes, his grades, his friends. Any deeper subjects are quickly ignored and deflected and for a while, she allows Stiles to humor her, but he can sense her stubbornness, and he knows sooner or later he’ll have to talk about the pool incident, about Derek, about how he allowed him to die, and he just can’t allow that to happen.

It’s all fine for the first couple of days. “I’m fine,” he says, lacing a shoelace through the net and Ms. Morrell cocks her head to the side, and he knows that she doesn’t believe it for a second, but she doesn’t push him, not yet.

“I’m fine,” he says, and he can almost pretend that his heart doesn’t miss a beat. What he doesn’t say: _Aside from the not sleeping, the jumpiness, the constant, overwhelming, crushing fear that something terrible is about to happen._

\---

A few days later, he’s staring out the window at the parking lot. Morrell doesn’t sigh, though Stiles thinks that she really wants to, but she does start shuffling papers around, knowing she’s about to dismiss him and to be honest he just wants to go home an crawl into bed and pretend all is well with the world.

He can see the jeep from here, old and sticking out like a sore thumb among all the newer, more expensive cars that surround it, and Derek is leaning by the driver’s side, looking back right at him. He moves so suddenly, Morrell herself looks like she was about to jump out of her skin. “Stiles?”

Derek isn’t there anymore and Stiles’ heart is pounding so hard, he thinks Morrell must be able to hear it. He slumps back into the seat, squeezing his crosse so tightly that his knuckles turn white.

“You know when you’re drowning you don’t actually inhale until right before you black out?” he says, his voice distant like it’s coming from miles away. Morrell looks surprised for a split second before her face shifts into her usual blankness. He pretends not to notice, and fiddles around with the net so he won’t have to look at her.

“It’s called voluntary apnea. No matter how much you’re freaking out, the instinct not to let any water in is so strong that you won’t open your mouth until you feel like your head’s exploding.”

\---

Stiles jolts awake in the middle of the night. His lamp is still on and his textbook is stuck to his cheek, his bed a mess of pens and papers. Everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be and Stiles doesn’t understand what made him wake up until he sees Derek standing by the window, staring up at the moon.

Stiles scrambles up into sitting so quickly that the pillows and half the comforter end up sliding to the floor. “Derek,” he breathes, eyes wide and chest constricting painfully.

Derek looks away from the window slowly, looking pale and soft and tired. “Stiles,” he answers and Stiles chokes on air.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer, “All those times, the shadows…”

Derek looks at him, eyes human-green instead of the bleeding-red he’s grown used to in the past couple of weeks. “Yes.” 

Stiles nods, wrangling his hands in his sheets. “I’m sorry,” he says when the silence gets to be too much. He stares at his hands, unable to look at Derek in the corner and the way that he can see the posters on the wall through him.

“You did what you had to,” Derek says and that’s so much worse than any version of _it’s not your fault, Stiles,_ he could have come up with.

“What I had to,” Stiles parrots back and the laugh that follows is bitter and a little bit hysterical. “I let you go, Derek. Who does that? After all the times you’ve saved me, I just let you go. I could have saved you. No, I _should_ have saved you!” There are tears running down his face now and he wipes at them angrily with his sleeve. “It’s all my fault.”

Derek steps away from the window and sits down next to him, close enough that their shoulders would be bumping against each other if Derek was alive. Stiles stares at the way the bed doesn’t bend under his weight. “You had an idea and you ran with it. It’s simple science, Stiles, you know that. Self-preservation instincts. I was so sure you didn’t have them.”

Stiles makes a choked sound. “You’re not funny. This isn’t a joke.”

There is a long moment of silence when Stiles almost expects Derek to retort with his usual biting sarcasm, and he thinks maybe Derek does too, but then he says, voice gentle and placating the way it never was, “It was a stupid idea, but you did what you had to. And I don’t fault you for that. It’s done, it’s over. Let bygones be bygones. I can’t forgive you Stiles because you’ve done nothing wrong.” And softer, “You have to let me go.”

“You don’t get it, Derek.” He wipes his face again, though it doesn’t do much.

Derek waits for him to continue, but the only sounds coming out of Stiles are his sniffling. “What don’t I get, Stiles?” 

There’s another long silence and Derek almost gives up on waiting for an answer when Stiles whispers, “I killed my mother.” He looks up straight at Derek then, eyes red-rimmed and face splotchy, and then, louder, “I killed my mother, Derek, and now I’ve killed you.”


End file.
